


All The Words We Cannot Speak - Chapter 2 of "A Sword of Air and Darkness"

by Chibojan



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies), Thor - All Media Types, Thor: Tales of Asgard, l - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Brothers, Foreboding, Loki - Freeform, M/M, Oral, damage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-12
Updated: 2015-09-12
Packaged: 2018-04-20 09:04:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4781630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chibojan/pseuds/Chibojan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After his release, Loki realizes something in him is broken and he believes it can never be healed.  He knows that by taking his side Thor has exiled himself as well.  All around him the first family in Asgard is in turmoil; even the centuries old marriage of Odin and Frigga is shattered.  Would it be better if he had indeed died? </p><p>Weapons-master Bal enters the brothers' lives to become both support and nuisance  - and maybe something other than he seems.</p><p>Loki has little left to give but he gives to Thor what he can - his unspoken love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All The Words We Cannot Speak - Chapter 2 of "A Sword of Air and Darkness"

In the days that followed my release -indeed, my rescue - I lived a very quiet life. There are those that have spread the lie that my brother was bewitched by me into taking me from prison and others who claim that he kept me locked in his quarters so that he might torment me himself in revenge. There was a time when I could have turned their tongues backwards in their heads. But not now. 

I was grateful to have refuge even in a house in which I was aware I was not welcome. Thor had an entire wing to himself, as befitted the Crown Prince and I tried to stay within those bounds. Odin did not visit Thor’s chambers – they were, he said pointedly, infested with vermin. I had not seen him since my release and I did not want to. I had been humbled – but there were limits to that. 

It goes without saying that there was a great division between my brother and Odin and of course I was a part of that division. The very mention of my name (which was actually officially proscribed) made him grind his teeth. 

One night Thor stormed ( he truly was God of Thunder, and Lightning and Sudden Hailstorms) into the private chambers we shared; slammed the door so hard weapons fell off the walls ; ripped off his cloak and slung it; slammed Mjolnir down and shattered the stones of the floor; threw himself into a chair and began wrenching off his boots. 

I was sitting crosslegged on the bed trying to translate an ancient scroll Thor wanted for a council; it pleased him to see me occupied and I have to confess it gave me some feeling of usefulness. I unwound the cloak from around my head where it had landed in its flight and set my papers aside. He had been in Council chambers with Odin all day. “It did not go well?” I asked. 

“Fucking ill-made boots!” he exploded, trying to kick them off toe first. 

I went and got the bootjack and offered it to him. “Try this, they say it’s a wonderful invention.” 

But it didn’t work within the first three seconds and so it went sailing across the room – not the first time, of course, that it had taken flight: we used to heave it at each other on a regular basis. The stone walls – for it was our old nursery – were chipped at about head height from one end to another. 

“Here,” I said. “Give me your foot, Oh Patient One.” I knelt and Thor’s anger vanished, as it so often does.

“No,” he said. “Don’t kneel. I do not like to see you like that, Loki.”

“Sometimes you do,” I said, which made him grin a little. 

“Well, not to take my boots off, at any rate. I am sorry for my rage but I have been sorely tried today.”

“I was grateful it was the cloak, and not the bootjack. Don’t be stubborn, give me your foot.” I pried his wet boots off – he has never stepped around a puddle in his life - and he lay back with a sigh. The servants had brought dinner up as they did most nights and Thor slopped a cup of wine and ripped the leg off some overcooked beast. I took my plate, which the kitchen staff probably spat on, to the big ironbound trunk at the foot of the bed. It was more comfortable for me and I had less chance of being hit with shrapnel from Thor's dinner.

“He contradicts me for the sake of contradicting,” he said moodily, his blue eyes dark with temper, “he denies my requests for the sake of denying and then turns about and grants them so long as it is not I that ask.”

“He’s punishing you because of me,” I said quietly. I pushed my food around on my plate so it looked like I was eating. I did wish we had a dog. 

“He’s always been like this when I cross him.”

“I’d prefer not to go back to my previous accommodations,” I said, feeling the darkness of that memory scratch at the back of my brain, “but if there is somewhere you could…well, put me…would it ease things?” I put my elbows on my knees and looked at the floor. “It wouldn’t matter much, as long as I didn’t have to fight…”

I forget how fast he can move sometimes. He took two strides to where I sat on the huge trunk at the end of the great bed and pulled me upright in one motion. “It would matter to me,” he said fiercely, gripping my shoulders.

I’m always at a disadvantage when I’m three inches off the floor and it is not of my doing. “At least there might be peace between you and your father --- Thor, this is not comfortable.”

He let me down. He truly does not realize how strong he is. “Father and I will do battle until the end of our days whether you are here or not. It is our nature. Do you know what brings me peace? Seeing you sitting on my bed with books and papers spread about you, as you used to. “

“I accomplished little, I’m afraid. I think this is the wrong scroll for what you want; it dates back beyond the Great Reconstruction of Bathir and…”

He held up his hands. “Don’t. It makes my head hurt. You and Bathir, you work it out, my own, and you will have my gratitude if you tell me only what I need to know. And speaking of that, Bal tells me you “didna eat enough for a sick cat” today”.

“Thor, is it entirely necessary for me to have a nanny? I’m a little old for that.”

He laughed, which is always a good sound. Bal, the old weapons master who had visited me in prison, had become a part of our lives, rather like a bad case of shin splints. Thor had tried to reward him for his help and he had refused the money with indignant pride and asked if he could serve us instead. “I’ve served t’ great all my days and it goes hard w’ me to be a pensioner. I canna fight like I used but I might be of help to you young princes.”

And he was. A castle the size of Asgard is not like a home in which one can wait on oneself (although if I live long enough I shall have such a home, small and quiet and far from everything, and perhaps some cats to keep me company) and the servants feared me as a sorcerer and hated me as a Jotun, even those who had known me as a child. They feared, I know, getting on the wrong side in the balance of power between Thor and Odin. And our mother’s self-imposed exile had shaken the kingdom and upset the workings of the palace, which is as delicate a balance as any small nation’s. So much was broken in Asgard. 

In a way, the north wing – we had taken to calling it Thorgard – was a bit like a small country under embargo. Not even a God of Thunder can overcome the intransigence of stubborn servants; aside from killing them, which he could not well do, he had little way to enforce his orders. We lived in surprising squalor for Princes. Even Thor was beginning to notice it. 

Bal stopped all that. He made strategic war on the downstairs troops and won freedom, or at least clean sheets and towels, for Thorgard. Meals arrived hot and on time and I no longer had to throw my boots at the rats. 

More importantly, he was the probably the reason I survived the illness that besieged me in prison and had then flamed into fever deadly even for me. And while most of what I remember from those weeks is blurred by nightmares and delirium, I do remember Bal’s skillful care. You never forget those that ease your pain.

“You don’t soldier as long as I did and not pick up a bit o’ knowledge ‘ere and there,” I remember him saying, patting Thor’s shoulder as no real servant would dare. “There, now, Lord Thor, ‘e’s a strong lad and I know a bit about this and we shall pull ‘im through, you and I.”

They did pull me through, although whether that was a favor or not I was not yet sure. To my annoyance Bal had then put himself in charge of me as if I was two and in short pants and Thor, who tended to be a little overprotective these days, not only thought it was funny but encouraged him. I remembered Bal's many kindnesses from my childhood to now but there were times when I caught a look on his face that spoke of something very like anger. Oddly enough I couldn't touch his mind. I didn't feel any kind of wall or shield that would speak of deception, and I promise you that I looked: it was just like a book with uncut pages. I was born with Sight; it cannot be taken from me. I didn't think - at least I hoped - it was not failing me; one does now and then find minds which are not accessible. 

He was nothing but kind, though, if wearing, and often brought me books from the great library where he was not supposed to go. "I canna read much, but these had handsome covers," he would say, handing over the looted texts, and they usually proved to be of my taste or need at the moment. I imagine the Palace Librarian was losing his mind over his unstable inventory. Some of them I recognized as my mother's and I kept them, if only because I could still feel her hands touching the pages.

I believe if I had asked for the King's horse he would have brought it up to me. Thor, who was trying to assemble at least a token army for Asgard, found him a resource of information and knowledge and I was grateful when his attention was off me and my failure to eat like three starving Vikings. 

“It is entirely necessary for you to eat,” Thor said. We were playing a game in which all I needed was food and sleep and care to return to who I had been. I knew that deep within me something was broken beyond repair and my lingering sickness was one no healing chamber and no kind care could mend. I sometimes felt like my body was warring within itself, that it was trying to tear itself apart. 

“I’m fine,” I told him, wishing I had enough magic left to mute Bal. “I just read, that doesn’t take much energy.”

That was a good move. “You need air and sun, we both do. I am in the council chambers too much and doing no good anyway. We shall ride tomorrow, then.” I could read his thought, though I tried not to do that. _There, that will fix it._ It was his uppermost mind, where we tell ourselves the lies that help us survive. Further I did not go.

“That would be good,” I said, and did not add, _With you as my warder and my horse in hobbles, if Odin has anything to do with it._ Not that it was necessary: I knew if I breached the borders of Asgard I would be incinerated by the walls of power that surrounded it. No one had told me Odin had done this but I knew. It was what I would have done. 

“Try not to be angry with Bal,” he said, finishing his now cold meal. “He treats me the same way, and he means well. He was always a good man. The other day he wouldn’t let Sif leave until he’d completely unsaddled her horse and re-saddled it himself. “Didn’t look good and tight,” he said.”

“Is she well?” I asked. Sif and I had a strained relationship. I annoyed her and I made sure she stayed annoyed; that was my insurance that I never stepped over a line I had drawn long ago.

“As always,” he said. Sif was a place of peace for him. I envied that. And I could have had my own woman, for women always love the wicked. But I was not cruel enough to draw any woman into this world of mine now. What had I to give besides exile and Jotun halfbreeds?

“You should ride with her, Thor, alone, I am sure she misses you.”

“She would like to see you,” he said, carefully examining his goblet.

“You are such a bad liar,” I laughed. “My dear Thor.” It was a rare gesture and one that lit up his face. The Gods know it is not my choice that I cannot show him the abundant affection he shows me; something froze in me on that awful night when I learned I was nothing and no one. Had it not I think we could have somehow managed to survive with less damage. But the Gods never strip you of everything even if they intend to use it later to torment you; I still had the ability to tell him I loved him with my body, and in the nights I gave him all the love I could not speak in words.

Tonight every bone in my body hurt but that was a small matter. I went to him, and I dropped to my knees and put my head in his lap. He ran his fingers through my hair and I felt him grow hard beneath my cheek.

“No boots this time,” I said, and he laughed again. 

When I pulled his breeches open he made the deep rough sound that was almost a growl and slid down in the great chair and spread his long legs. I ran my hands under his tunic and he ripped it open for me. Hands, fingers, mouth, I used them all on that deep golden-napped chest until he reminded me where I needed to be and I slid down and took him with my mouth, as much and as deeply I could, I locked my arms around his thighs and did the things that made him drop his head back and moan. He crossed his legs behind me and held me there although he need not have feared I would stop. He dug his hands into my hair and I could feel his forearms strain, trying to keep from forcing himself deeper into my throat than I could bear.

“Look at me, Loki, look up at me, now," and I did, because I know what that sight does to him, seeing me with my mouth on him, and that was when he came up off the chair crying out hoarsely over and over and I clung to him until he had nothing left. 

“You…” he whispered, staggering a little as he got up. He kissed me, “And they say you have no magic left. My own, my dearest…”

He would have liked to please me but the moment that big body stretched out he was losing his battle with sleep. Which was as I intended. “Wait…no…Loki…come here, I can still…” 

“No, you can't. As I said, you are such a bad liar. You, Lord Thor, are done entirely," I said in Bal's accent, and I kissed him. 

The last thing he did was pull me against him. I breathed in the smell of his skin, which calmed me as it ever had. I reached into his dreams and I told him I loved him there and I think perhaps he heard me because even though he was asleep he turned toward me. My Thor, my brother, my refuge and my only safe place in all the universe. I lay awake in his arms as I had many times and guarded his dreams from evil. It was all I could do now, but I would do it until I could do it no more. And I wondered how long that would take.


End file.
